


landscape with a blur of conquerors

by Amber_Flicker



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Pre-Canon, Set during the war, character study no one asked for but I wrote anyway bc I have a lot of feelings about eichi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-18 12:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17580641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amber_Flicker/pseuds/Amber_Flicker
Summary: Maybe the real casualty of war was himself.





	landscape with a blur of conquerors

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Richard Siken poem of the same name.

He'd long accepted that he wouldn't live a particularly long life; he'd spent too long being in and out of hospitals to be in denial at this point. Which was exactly why he wanted to make what years he did have count.  
He wanted to be remembered for something, and not something as simple as a high school idol career- from a school whose standards had dropped significantly. This school was filled with exactly that. People who had the chance to make something of themselves,  
and some who did, but most wasted the opportunity. They wasted all of their time, their health, their ability to become idols with far less difficulty than Eichi himself had to face to do the same. And the school did nothing to motivate them to change that. There was nothing convincing anyone to work to their full potential, nothing to cut out all the people not meant for this and bring out the people who were. The idol world had no place for those who didn't care.

So that's where he started. 

Eichi would not waste his life away doing nothing because of his disadvantages. It made things harder, but he refused to be lazy like the people he was going against. And if he had to _use_ people to make his plan successful, well, it was just utilizing his resources, wasn't it? He didn't force anyone to do anything; they did it all on their own, all he had to do was pull the strings here and there. All it took was careful execution of his plans, and people reacting exactly how he'd predicted. And he had nothing but time to plan and predict, with how often he ended up back in the hospital or in the school's infirmary with nothing to do, how often he couldn't participate because the doctors told him to take it easy. 

All the pieces fell into place too easily, and he didn't have to do more than set things in motion for people to bring about their own downfall.

If he had to destroy some genuine talent, it was unavoidable. Others would rise to replace them. Casualties happened in war, whether he liked having to do it or not. It was the only way to completely destroy the old, flawed system of Yumenosaki and to build up something new and more pure than what came before. There would be no more false idols here.

It isn't as if he didn't make his own sacrifices in the process. By the time the war was over, he had completely destroyed most all his own personal relationships. No one visited him in the hospital, anymore. No one dared try to be his friend because they were afraid he'd destroy them too. Why wouldn't they be? He'd left a trail of broken people in his wake. Eichi had risen to the top, had done exactly what he'd set out to do. There was order in the school for the first time in a long time. He'd created a legacy that would outlast his time at Yumenosaki, and he was still unsatisfied. There were high costs to getting here, not the least of which was thoroughly destroying who he used to be. 

Perhaps he lost some of his humanity along the way. He thinks of discarded titles no longer spoken and the one he gained in its place.

 

Emperor, they call him.

 

...Being the Emperor is lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> Me getting attached to problematic characters again? No one is surprised.
> 
> If there are any stories that go into detail about the war besides Magicians Assemble, Monochrome Checkmate, and Marionette, I have not read them so they wouldn't be referred to here, but as far as I know this doesn't conflict canon events at all.
> 
> Cliches-and-coffee // a-logicalruse on tumblr


End file.
